


building tension zio porcone

by tomurai



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: ...pretty much, Altered Mental States, Autistic Character, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Red Wheelbarrow, Season/Series 02, Sleep disorders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 14:06:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12134100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomurai/pseuds/tomurai
Summary: he wants to sleep. he wants this to stop. he wants to fucking sleep.





	building tension zio porcone

**Author's Note:**

> title from BTZP - Building Tension Zio Porcone by Starving GOGO (it's on Chiptunes = WIN's HalloWIN compilation)
> 
> wrote this after season 2 finished airing, if i'm remembering right; i only just finished it up now. the goal was to post this before season 3. 
> 
> there are a couple references to the red wheelbarrow novel, although i haven't finished it. 
> 
> warnings for some pretty brief mentions of drug use, past character death, and very brief harm to animals (flipper; not on-screen or described at all).

he’s fucking tired. he can’t sleep when mr. robot’s there, watching him, and he always is. maybe it’s supposed to be comforting. maybe it would be if he weren’t so fucked up. 

the drugs didn’t work. they seemed like they would, at first – he felt faster, more alert, everything moving at hyperspeed. he didn’t see him, until there he was again. mr. robot, forcing him to throw up all the pills and face him again. 

he misses the internet, but he also doesn’t. this is safer, not just for him but for everyone else. darlene. angela. fsociety. (shayla.)

_your connection to reality is fragile at best. mr. robot’s always there, and you know he isn’t real (he_ isn’t _), so you don’t know what else is._

he doesn’t really know what’s happening outside. if anything is. 

it doesn’t really matter when he can’t fucking sleep. he needs to think, needs to have a mostly-clear mind to deal with this shit with ray, to listen to mr. robot’s rambling and taunts and not go (visibly) insane. he needs to stop daydreaming of code, wondering what happened to tyrell, whether he really did shoot him. 

he falls asleep eventually, passes out more from exhaustion. wakes up to his dead father’s face staring at him, without expression. 

angela visits him. darlene visits him. gideon visits him, and then dies. krista visits him at regular intervals, though he isn’t sure what those intervals are. 

he keeps asking, over and over and over again, _what happened to tyrell_. _where is tyrell wellick_.

mr. robot keeps watching him sleep. 

they play chess. more times than he’d bother counting, if he were even able to trust his own memory. 

he’s paranoid, afraid. terrified. every draw is a sign of how weak he is. how strong mr. robot is, in comparison. 

they play chess, this time for control of his own mind. ( _it’d be like going to sleep and not waking up_ , says mr. robot. he wants to sleep. he really fucking wants to sleep.) neither of them win, and mr. robot acts like it should be some kind of huge revelation for him. in some ways it is, but in others it isn’t. 

maybe the real shock is that he’d already known this, deep down. 

his dreams are mostly quiet nightmares. they should be more menacing than mr. robot’s idle threats, mood swings and lectures, but they aren’t. 

he can hardly comprehend human speech, sometimes. his thoughts run in if-then-else circles (if i’ve been left alone, then they haven’t been caught, else i would be charged with more by now. if mr. robot is here, then i must be crazy, else i wouldn’t be seeing my dead father.). he misses flipper. he hopes she’s alright, that that asshole lenny shannon hasn’t hurt her again. 

he wishes he could sleep. mr. robot stands over him at night, a menacing shadow. 

he loses time too often. blinks and he’s somewhere else. 

it keeps happening while he’s talking to leon (or maybe he just notices it more then). what does mr. robot even get from listening to leon talk? is it some kind of power display, or is it something he should be more wary of? 

he keeps noting it down in the journal, regardless. maybe he needs mr. robot, but hes still himself. he’s still _elliot alderson_. mr. robot can’t take that, no matter what he says. he can’t. 

he can’t.


End file.
